CFPB's Kraninger announces changes to key management posts

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Kathy Kraninger continues to put her own stamp on the agency, but this time with a management step that echoes her predecessor.

Kraninger announced the hiring of Andrew Duke, who had been chief of staff to former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, as policy associate director for external affairs.

Duke succeeds Anthony Welcher, who was one of several political appointees brought to the agency by former acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney, all of whom took on the "policy associate director" title. Duke's hiring suggests Kraninger plans to resume the practice of relying on political appointees at the agency.

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Duke spent eight years working for Hensarling, a Texas Republican, at a time when the GOP sought to severely weaken the CFPB’s authority. Duke previously worked as chief of staff to Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., and former Rep. Robin Hayes, R-N.C.

The appointment was one of five announced late last week as Kraninger seeks to round out her management team. They include the promotion of Laura Fiene to the position of west regional director in the Office of Supervision Examinations. She is succeeding Edwin Chow, who had planned to leave. Fiene joined the CFPB at its inception in 2011.

Separately, Kelly Thompson Cochran, the CFPB’s assistant director for regulations, is leaving the bureau to work for FinRegLab, a new research organization, according to three sources familiar with Cochran’s plans.

Cochran had been at the CFPB since its founding in 2011 and is the latest top official hired by former Director Richard Cordray to leave the agency. Cochran had been a Treasury Department official who worked on the Dodd-Frank Act and was instrumental in the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rulemaking on mortgage originations.

In addition, Marisol Garibay was named acting chief communications officer, taking over for John Czwartacki, who had been the chief spokesman for Mulvaney. Garibay had previously had jobs at Treasury, the Office of Management and Budget, and the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank led by former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

Lora McCray was named director for the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion. She most recently was a civil rights attorney for Ancon, a Washington staffing agency, and had been an assistant vice president of diversity and inclusion at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

McCray succeeds Stuart Ishimaru, the office’s former assistant director, who joined the CFPB in 2012 and had been commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The CFPB also named Delicia Reynolds Hand as the deputy associate director for external affairs, a job she held in an acting capacity for a year. She joined the CFPB in 2012.